


The Limit

by chuusei_teki_na_koe



Series: Emotional Sounds on the Violin [4]
Category: Twosetviolin
Genre: Angst, Drama, Feels, M/M, hamfisted metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21955552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuusei_teki_na_koe/pseuds/chuusei_teki_na_koe
Summary: Brett's trying his best to remain friends, but maybe they never were friends.What is this relationship?
Relationships: Eddy Chen/Brett Yang
Series: Emotional Sounds on the Violin [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1580653
Comments: 18
Kudos: 184





	The Limit

**Author's Note:**

> The names of other characters in this are totally made up, they're not anyone real.
> 
> I really struggled with this fic, like I went over it like 4 or 5 times rewriting sections, and I'm still very unsure of the characterization. RPF is hard. Hard hard hard. Harder than FPF or original fiction. Renewed respect for everyone who writes this stuff. Well, I hope it works. I've honestly never been so waffly about a piece of writing before, usually I just bang it out without much thought. I don't know.
> 
> I'm also not sure which show had the “I love you” in it, I swear I saw a clip at one point, but handwave, whatever, accuracy shmaccuracy. Just assume the show includes it.

Maybe it was fitting that they'd met in a math tutoring class.

They'd stayed with that tutoring school all through high school, since both of them had sucked just that much at math, so they'd been stuck together through geometry and algebra and trig and calculus...

It had always been like calculus: always arcing toward that point, trying to get as close to it as possible, but never, ever getting there. What would even be there?

Brett didn't know. He didn't want to go there.

They continued touring, continued filming. Things went back to the way they'd been before.

x x x

“Can you not?” Brett inched away. He was sitting on the hotel bed, checking their travel itinerary on his phone, while Eddy was beside him, slumped down and sleepily browsing Twitter on his own phone. He'd just been leaning over to rest his head on Brett's side—Brett moved out of range.

“Come on.” Eddy flopped over on him.

“Don't.”

Eddy passively resisted, not moving himself, forcing Brett to push him over in annoyance. Eddy's eyes flicked away from his phone to check Brett's face. Brett wasn't looking back at him.

“You're gonna fall asleep like this,” Brett said. “Go to bed before you pass out.”

Eddy lay there for a moment before finally switching over to the other bed, plugging in his phone and setting it on the side table, then crawling under the covers. He was facing the other bed, but Brett was focused on work.

They both said good night, same as always.

x x x

If there was one word to summarize Brett's feelings about growing up, it was _bittersweet._

If you wanted to get good at the violin, if you really wanted it and you really cared, then you had to abandon other things, and there was a cost to that. You'd feel resentful at your parents for forcing you, in the moment, you'd want to do other things. But it was worth it in the end. Nobody ever thought back to their childhood and thought, _gee, I wish I'd played more video games and practiced less._

By that same token, Brett didn't think back on being a teenager and think, _gee, I wish I'd kissed Eddy._

Sure, he'd thought about it plenty. He'd fantasized about it too many times to count, turning the idea over in his mind until he could practically feel it stinging on his lips. But he thought about it in the same way he thought about playing _Smash_ when he practiced violin—it was something he knew he shouldn't be doing, something that wasn't in his future. It was something that would take him nowhere.

This wasn't something he'd made a conscious decision not to do—it was something he'd taken for granted he would never do. That was the limit, the point that would never be reached.

x x x

When they were at hotels or Air B'n'B's, they slowly stopped talking about anything irrelevant. They practiced, they talked about the tour, immediate plans, and about videos, and they didn't touch on anything else. They got along well, as usual—they made all the same jokes, they didn't fight, and they smiled at each other and kept the tone light. It was easy.

The hardest part was the shows.

“I love you,” Brett said on stage, yet again, and Eddy beamed back at him in reply. And then afterward, backstage, they would look away from each other and not interact more than necessary for the rest of the night.

In their hotel room one night, Eddy tossed himself down on the bed, then threw a pillow at him. “What do you wanna get to eat?”

Brett caught the pillow with a tired sigh. “There's some leftover takeout in the fridge.”

“That's the stuff that had mushrooms in it, though...” Eddy stretched up, his shirt rising to bare his stomach and a line of dark hair that disappeared into his tight jeans. Brett's eyes caught on his stomach for just an instant before pulling away again, but Eddy didn't miss his look.

“Checkin' me out, huh?” He grinned, tugging his shirt up further and stroking his lean stomach.

Brett rolled his eyes and tossed the pillow in his arms at Eddy's face. “Stop doing that.” Then he went to the fridge to finish off the take-out himself.

“Why?” Eddy demanded, and Brett could hear him rolling over on the bed. “I'm just joking around. I'm not acting any different. _You're_ the one acting different.”

Crouched in front of the open mini-fridge, Brett paused, staring at the Styrofoam container in front of him. A full minute of analysis of the container, and Brett realized two things:

One: he didn't want to eat this mushroom fried rice.

Two: he _was_ acting different. And he couldn't go back to how he'd been before.

Brett shut the fridge again.

x x x

Brett couldn't say at what point he'd figured it out. It wasn't like he'd crossed a clear boundary line into knowing. Their friends had joked a hundred times that they acted like an old married couple, Eddy had jokingly flirted with him a thousand times, and Eddy had given him ten thousand looks that said nothing and yet everything. At a certain point, you had to be an idiot not to know.

But there was a difference between knowing and doing. If you never carried it into action, it would never be real.

“I love you,” Brett said on stage, yet again, and Eddy beamed back at him in reply. And then afterward, after they'd packed up everything and were ready to go back, Brett went out to explore the city. Eddy seemed tired, so Brett didn't try to drag him along.

Brett visited a few bars he'd never been to and would surely never see again, chatted with some intriguing strangers whose names he'd never bothered asking, and when he got back to the hotel room, he found Eddy was already asleep, but he stirred when Brett came in.

“Where'd you go?” Eddy mumbled as Brett felt his way through the dark room to the other bed.

“Just some bars.”

“How was it?”

“...It was good.” Brett didn't say anything else, and Eddy didn't ask any more.

Neither of them mentioned how Eddy hadn't been there.

x x x

Things continued. Whenever Brett didn't need to be with Eddy for planning, practicing or traveling, he was elsewhere, going out with their staff or on his own, doing tourist things and filling his day. Eddy had always preferred to stay at the hotel anyway, so it wasn't like Brett was deliberately leaving him out of anything. Eddy liked to sleep a full night, and there were tasks to keep him occupied, and he hadn't had enough time to practice touring the tour, anyway. Eddy liked restaurants and cafes, but he didn't like a lot of tourist stuff, and he certainly didn't like bars and clubbing. So maybe this was better.

Just once, they broke the silent agreement to stop talking about it.

They were in an Air B'n'B that night, a rather nice one that had a classic claw-foot bathtub and heated floors in the fancy bathroom. So that night, instead of going out, Brett decided to take advantage of the bath and just soak for a while. In the background, he heard Eddy practicing. When Brett heard that excerpt of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto—Eddy was doing one of the runs over and over and over, a run that was more familiar to Brett than the back of his own hand, slowing it down, chunking it, doing it in rhythms, playing it faster than regular tempo, different bowings—

Yeah, that was about what it felt like. Thoughts and feelings running through your mind enough times in enough ways that it's just second nature, a part of how your heart works. But what do you do when you want to un-practice it? How do you make it so that you can't do that run anymore? You let your mind wander for just a second when you're playing something else, and it just comes back, and suddenly you've switched pieces and you're playing it again and again and again. The only way to make it stop is just cut off your hands.

Brett sloshed out of the bath, trying to drown out the sound of the piece, but he could still hear it in his head.

x x x

When Brett came out of the bathroom in a towel, Eddy stopped practicing, lowering his violin and turning to look at him. His gaze was openly hungry, and Brett hurried to his suitcase to get his sleeping clothes.

“Hey, have you ever had sex with a guy?”

That was a very sudden and uncomfortable question to ask when Brett was still in the middle of putting a shirt on. Tugging it down over his head, Brett groped around for the spot he'd left his glasses and then put them on.

Well, he wasn't going to lie about it now. “Yeah.”

Eddy's eyelids twitched, and he looked down. “You never told me, huh.”

 _I guess that makes the both of us, doesn't it?_ Brett swallowed that bitter remark, saying instead, “It'd be kind of weird to tell you about my sex life.”

“I've told you about mine.”

“Yeah, and it was weird.” Brett toweled his hair a bit, then tossed the towel over a chair. He thought about sitting down to talk, but he kind of didn't want to stay in this conversation.

“So what was it like?” Eddy was just standing there, not making eye contact, just sort of absently fiddling with his bow.

“What was it like? What's that supposed to mean? It's sex.”

“I mean like, was it good.”

“...Yeah.”

“You play first violin, or second?” Eddy tried to joke, and Brett offered him a snort for the attempt.

“I play viola,” Brett said evasively, and they both went _ohhhh_ at the self-burn.

Eddy went over to his case and started putting his violin away as he continued. “So who was it? Anyone I know?”

“Uhh, I mean, some of them...” the words fell out of Brett's mouth, and then he froze.

“Whoa, getting around, huh? And here I thought you were like, a foreveralone.”

Brett rolled his eyes, rubbing his arms uncomfortably. “It's just a few guys, like casually. It's never been anything serious.” He felt the need to justify himself, and hated that he did.

“So like who?” Eddy closed his case and turned around. “Johnny Bryan? He's good-looking. How about that cellist from our uni quartet? I know he was into guys. Or whassisface, that pianist you had over when he was touring, Kevin, Kevin what?”

“Kevin Ho...” Brett knew the look on his face was giving it away.

“You did! I knew it, you fucked Kevin, oh my god. I thought he was looking smug when I ran into you guys downtown that one time, after the concert. He was like, _yeah, we're going clubbing,_ and he just kinda smirked...so was it a gay club?” Eddy laughed, but the sound of it just made Brett wince.

“Yeah...”

“Was he good?”

“Eddy...”

“I mean, I'm just curious, 'cause I've never fucked a guy, I've just thought about it. I've always been too chicken to actually go and do it, you know? So like, I gotta admire you for just going out and getting what you want.” Eddy was looking at the ground and away from Brett, visibly tense.

This entire conversation was a mistake. Despite his valiant attempts at pretending otherwise, Eddy was not asking this question to make lighthearted conversation. Brett sighed and mushed at his hair with a hand, trying to find a way out. “I mean, it's fine, it's just sex. I get distracted if I don't get laid sometimes. It's not even something I do often, seriously.”

“Distracted, huh.” Eddy opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but then dropped it and just left the room.

x x x

One night, all their tour staff got together for dinner after a show. They didn't always have dinner after a show, it depended on the schedule and everything, but that time, they did.

It started off fine. Brett liked all the staff, though there was a weird added layer of awkwardness about being the boss that he was still a little uncomfortable with. You could be friendly with them, but there was a power relationship there that changed things.

Right now, that particular power relationship was working in his favor, as none of the staff were going to be so forward as to bring up the fact that things were weird between him and Eddy, though Brett was sure that everyone knew. The two of them usually sat close at dinner, but this time, they were at awkward angles away from each other, and they didn't really talk. But neither of them brought it up, so nobody else did, either.

At least, not until the drinks came out.

Eddy was a terrible lightweight, and he'd start babbling and laughing over anything after he sniffed a couple of bottle caps. So when someone made a comment toward Brett that he was looking particularly dead-eyed lately—the sort of remark that could be taken as a joke, or could be a door to conversation—Eddy couldn't help himself.

“Yeah,” Eddy said, raising his voice to be heard over the restaurant noise and across the table. “Why're you looking so dead-eyed lately, Brett?” he said, his tone a little sharper than necessary.

“This is just my face,” Brett cut in, not letting Eddy try to imply anything.

“I think it's a progressive disease,” said the collaborative pianist who'd joined them for this leg of the tour. “He just looks more dead inside every year.” A smattering of laughs.

“Please tell me you're okay, though. We don't want you actually dying halfway through the tour,” said Mary, their coordinator, from where she sat next to Brett, with half a measure of light-hearted humor and an undertone of real concern.

“Oh, don't worry about him,” Eddy said, his uncomfortably sharp ears not at all missing the comment that had clearly been meant for Brett. “He's just a little _distracted_ lately. He probably needs to get out more.”

Brett glared down the table at him. “I go out all the time.” He forced his tone to be light. “You can always come with me.”

“I dunno, I'd probably just be a drag.” Eddy's tone was biting enough to turn heads. “I'm sure you can find someone better to go _clubbing_ with.”

“You're drunk, Eddy.” Brett stood up, pushing back his chair, and circled around to where Eddy was sitting. “How many have you had? I think I need to take you back to the Air B'n'B.” Laying his hands on Eddy's shoulders, Brett gave him a little tug.

But Eddy knocked his hands away. “You're the one who said no touching.”

The air at the table was extremely awkward, and everyone was trying to pretend like they didn't know what was going on, looking away or at their phones, or focusing on eating to distract themselves.

“Eddy,” Brett snapped, giving him an angry glare. Eddy wasn't so drunk that he couldn't realize he was making a scene.

Brett must have sounded harsher than he meant to, as he noticed the woman sitting beside Eddy flinch slightly, and the table got even more awkward and tense.

“Brett...” Mary was the first to break the silence.

But Eddy quickly cut her off, putting on an exaggerated _chill bro_ look. “No point getting mad at me, you think everyone here doesn't already basically know you like dick? Or are you gonna keep lying about it 'cause you don't want to look like a fag?”

It took Brett a moment to realize what Eddy had just said. It didn't quite compute. It didn't sound like something Eddy would say. It was nasty—calculated. He hadn't just blurted that because he was drunk, had he?

Brett's arms dropped to his sides. He went hot, then cold. Before he could exhale the breath that was building suffocatingly long inside him, he turned around and walked out of the restaurant, not even grabbing his jacket as he went. He heard the sound of a scraping chair behind him, but he didn't stop.

“Brett. Brett!”

Brett ignored Eddy's voice and kept walking down the street. He was immediately cold, the winter air biting on his bare arms, but he didn't care.

He heard footsteps catching up to him, and Eddy came up beside him, but Brett didn't look over. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets, his gaze on the sidewalk ahead of him as he walked quickly.

“I'm sorry, that was stupid, that was really stupid of me,” Eddy said, sounding desperately sincere. “I shouldn't have said that. I just—”

Brett didn't interrupt him or say anything, he just kept walking, but Eddy didn't seem able to finish.

“I'm sorry,” he repeated, like he didn't know how to say anything else.

They kept walking for a while in silence until finally, Brett said, “Can you just leave me alone for a while? I'm going for a walk.”

“It's below zero, and you don't have a jacket.”

“I'm fine.”

“Then take mine, at least,” Eddy shrugged out of his pink hoodie and jean jacket, handing them over to Brett, but Brett pushed them away. He surprised himself with the force of his push, knocking Eddy's hands aside.

“Are you—” Eddy walked a few more paces, then stopped, and Brett quickly left him behind. He could just hear Eddy behind him, sounding choked, saying, “Okay, then.”

x x x

“I love you,” Brett said on stage, yet again, and Eddy beamed back at him in reply.

When they embraced, the stage lights at that venue were particularly hot and bright. The moment his arms were around Eddy felt too warm, too real, and it ended too quick. The whole show went by too quickly, and when it was over and the lights were off, the stage felt cold, and Brett walked off first.

x x x

After the show, Mary approached Brett when he was alone. When she came in, he was sitting in a backstage greenroom, leaning against his closed violin case with his eyes shut, and he jerked up at her entrance.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and then, as if she'd rehearsed it, she said, “I'm not going to pry, I just want to know if there's anything I can do to help. We're all under a lot of stress.”

“Thanks,” Brett said, pushing out of his chair and picking up his violin case. “But it's nothing you can help with. We'll hold it together through the tour, don't worry.”

“What's going to happen after the tour?” she asked, and Brett paused. He tried to think about it, but he was just too exhausted. Maybe it was just the jet lag talking, but it felt like this show had drained every ounce of energy from him.

“...I don't know,” he answered honestly.

x x x

Another plane trip. Brett slept through the whole flight—who knew how Eddy spent it. When they set down in their new location, Brett decided to go out that night, but he wasn't feeling it, so he turned around and went back to the hotel, and was surprised to find that Eddy wasn't there. Brett thought about texting him, then didn't.

Eddy showed up about an hour later, red-faced and visibly drunk, and he seemed startled to see Brett sitting there on the bed, leaning against the headboard and on his phone. “What're you doing here?”

“This is our hotel room...”

“Yeah, but you're never here,” Eddy said, kicking off his shoes before he came over to the bed and flopped down there on his stomach, leaning his chin on his arms folded in front of him. He maintained a fixed distance from Brett, never touching him. “It's like you're avoiding me.”

Brett looked down from his phone, breathing out a long sigh, thinking of how to reply, but he couldn't find the words. He just didn't know what to say anymore.

“...Are you avoiding me, then?” Eddy said, after a long silence, bringing himself up onto his knees on the bed.

“I don't know...”

Eddy inched closer, coming up to sit beside Brett at the head of the bed, leaning forward to fold his arms over his knees a moment, then changing his mind to lean back against the headboard. He looked up at the ceiling, then away, his expression going through various tones of distress before he finally spoke. “I know I'm always causing you shit, and sorry doesn't mean anything...but I want you to know...I'm gonna do better. I'll be better, okay? I...I know I don't deserve anything, 'cause you're always the one pulling all the weight while I'm fucking around and fucking things up, and I'm sorry, I know I n-need you more than you need me, but I'll try to be...I'm _gonna_ be...”

Eddy was barely holding it together at this point. His voice sounded tight, like he was forcing it to be. Brett raised his head to see he was looking down at the bed, hands tense and fidgeting at his sides.

Something like anger struck Brett.

“You think...is that what you think?”

“I...” Eddy jerked his face up to look Brett straight in the eye. His lips trembled, then shut. His eyes were wide. He looked about ready to break.

“You think...you need me more than I need you?” Brett put down his phone, turning toward Eddy. He felt so overwhelmed, he could laugh or scream, he wasn't sure which.

How could Eddy not get it that badly? Hadn't Brett showed him a thousand moments of care, done everything for him, put his love into words and action and music? Maybe, maybe he hadn't said everything. He'd held something back. He'd never told Eddy how much of a driving force he was in Brett's life, how Brett couldn't imagine living without him. He'd never told Eddy that the main reason he'd agreed to start Twoset instead of going to study at a conservatory in Europe was because he'd wanted them to stay together. Because he knew he could never commit to his long-held dream of being a soloist if it meant practicing alone, touring alone.

He could never handle being alone.

Eddy was so good at understanding him, so why didn't he get that?

Voice low, Brett muttered, “Is this the only way you're gonna get it?” And then coming up onto his knees, he grabbed Eddy by his T-shirt and yanked him forward.

Their mouths crashed together awkwardly, and Eddy's initial reaction was shock as Brett pressed against Eddy, pushing him back against the headboard, shoving his legs down so Brett could straddle him. It took a moment for Eddy to kiss back, lips moving with hesitation. Brett closed his eyes—he didn't want to look.

His hands were shaking, so he balled them in Eddy's T-shirt and kissed him harder.

This was the point he had never touched: the limit.

Brett rolled his hips forward, rocking against Eddy, making him gasp. Brett devoured every noise he made, sliding one hand up his shirt to feel how hot his skin was.

Eddy's hands rose to his hips, grabbed tight, but paused there. “Brett. I don't know...”

“Please don't talk. I don't wanna think.”

Their lips met again, moving wet against each other, and the sound of Eddy's breathing was loud in Brett's ears. Brett's heart was beating so fast, he wasn't sure if he was turned on or freaking out. Should he keep going, or back off?

Then Eddy pushed him away, and Brett's heart just about stopped.

“What the hell, man?” Eddy's breath was ragged, his lips were red and swollen, and Brett couldn't meet his eyes.

“Didn't you want this?” Brett muttered, gaze focused on a point on Eddy's shirt.

“Yeah, but it just feels like—like I'm guilt-tripping you into sex!” Eddy's voice broke then, and he brought one arm up to his face, pressing the back of his hand against one eye like he was trying to contain himself. “I don't wanna make you do anything. That'd be worse...worse than...” He took a deep, rattling breath. “Mary told me...you said...you don't know what's gonna happen after this tour. Do you...wanna be away from me?”

Brett didn't even think. He took Eddy in his arms, squeezing him tight.

Eddy buried his face in the shoulder of Brett's sweater, shaking with soundless sobs. “I was...so scared to say anything for so long...I thought...if I did, it'd be over. I didn't wanna...fuck it up. And now I've fucked it up. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” Brett said, just because he didn't know what else to say. Listening to Eddy say this hurt like an ache deep in his bones. He knew that pain so intimately.

“I just...” he sniffed, “I don't get it. Why is fucking... _Kevin Ho_ good enough to fuck, and I'm not?”

Everything hurt. Brett was completely drained of every ounce of consideration he had. He released Eddy, and pushed him back. Maybe a little hard. Eddy's back hit the headboard of the bed, and he looked a little stunned as Brett knelt over him, looking down.

“What about you, huh?” Brett said, his voice an awful-sounding wheeze that he hated to hear, but he couldn't stop himself, now. Even knowing Eddy would never judge him for it, he still felt ashamed. “I fuck a couple of guys every few months and you're all torn up about it, but you date a girl for _four years_ and how do you think I felt? I had to tell myself, _when Eddy flirts with me, it's not for real, he likes girls,_ _I don't need anything else, we'll just be best friends,_ while I felt like a piece of shit for beating off to beach photos of you! I didn't want to hate her! I didn't want to hate you! I had to make myself fall out of love with you! I would've gone crazy otherwise!”

Brett didn't realize he was crying until Eddy's arms were around him, and Brett didn't know how to feel anymore.

Eddy pressed his face into the side of Brett's head, murmured into his hair, pulled him into his lap, against his chest. “I'm sorry. I wish I could go back in time and not be such a fucking idiot.”

But Brett didn't blame him. Not one bit. He'd been just as afraid. And he still was.

“I don't even know how to do this,” Brett said, half-laughing, half-crying. “I've never dated anyone for real before... I'm fucking twenty-six years old and I've never dated anyone for real. I don't know how to do this. I'm gonna fuck it up. I don't even know how I feel anymore.”

Eddy paused a moment, leaning his face on Brett's head. “...I dunno about you...but I feel kinda turned on.”

Brett snorted into Eddy's neck. “Do you have a crying fetish?”

“I mean this just feels good, stupid.” Eddy squeezed him, and Brett had to admit, it was nice. “Do you like this?”

Brett leaned into him a little. “Yeah...”

“Then stop thinking too much. You're just making it way too complicated in your head, like always.”

It was annoying when Eddy hit the nail on the head like that. “I'm not making it _too_ complicated.”

“Yeah, you are. It's like that time that one guy didn't show up for an interview, and you come up with this whole complicated motivation for why he didn't show, and it turned out he just slept in. Or that time you thought a teacher failed you and you were freaking out, second-guessing your entire academic history, when actually it was just that you handed your essay in to the wrong mailbox. Or that other time—”

“Okay, okay, point made.” Brett tried to sniffle in the quietest way possible, but Eddy probably heard it anyway.

“ _This_ is my point.” Eddy pulled back a little, then leaned over to softly kiss Brett's lips. “Do you like this?”

Brett was weirdly annoyed by the force of Eddy's argument. It made him feel quite dumb. “Maybe.”

Eddy kissed him again, longer, this time, and Brett leaned into it. He became rather more keenly aware of the fact that he was sitting in Eddy's lap, and they were pressed against each other from hip to torso. Eddy's arms tightened around his waist as their lips moved together softly. Eddy's touch was cautious, slow.

“Just maybe?” Eddy's voice was too close to his ear, his breath too warm.

“This is so weird,” Brett said with an awkward laugh. “It's like you wake up one morning, and your cat's suddenly turned into a dog, and everyone's acting like it's always been a dog.”

“You like dogs better, though. And that's a fucking weird metaphor, bro.”

“Can we still say bro? Doesn't that make this incest?”

“Now you're getting kinky.”

“You don't even wanna know about that,” Brett muttered.

“Oh?” Eddy's hands started moving up the back of Brett's shirt, just rubbing idly. “You still haven't told me if you play first or second violin.”

“Viola.”

“Don't put yourself down like that.” Eddy leaned forward, resting his head on Brett's shoulder, just staying close. “Unless that's code for like, you're turned on by screeching. _Waaark!_ ” Eddy squawked, shoving Brett down onto the bed as he bounced around and made weird noises.

“Agh, shut up, that's not my kink! That's not my kink!”

“I dunno, you look like you're into this. _Screeeee!_ ” Eddy dove into his stomach, lifted up Brett's shirt and pressed his face into the skin to make a fart noise.

“Aghhh, I think you've killed any boner I ever might have had or ever will have.” Brett shoved at his head, smushing Eddy's face between his hands. “Do you even know how to be sexy?”

“I've had sex before,” Eddy said in a rather smothered tone, stating the utterly obvious with his face completely smushed up in Brett's unforgiving grip. “It's like. A special hug.”

Brett laughed and wiggled Eddy's face in his hands before letting go to flop back on the bed. “Just come over here.”

Eddy acquiesced, crawling over to kneel over Brett on his hands and knees, and Brett grabbed his shirt, tugging it up and over his head, and Eddy did the same for him in return. Within moments, they'd both divested each other of all their clothes and were pressed skin-to-skin, tasting each other, exploring new territory. Eddy twitched under every stroke, pushing into Brett's touches like a cat, holding their hips together and rocking gently.

“What do you want to do?” Eddy broke their kiss to ask, his murmur warm against Brett's cheek. “You're kinda the expert, here.”

“This is nice, just keep going.” Brett's hands trailed up Eddy's sides to come to his head, running through his thick hair, and Eddy closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation.

“I already feel like I'm gonna cum, though.”

“Already? We've barely done anything.”

“I've been holding it in for a long time, okay.” Eddy rolled his hips, pace accelerating. He opened his eyes, looking down at Brett with the sort of sincere look that made his breath catch. “And you're really hot like this.”

Brett was at a loss for a reply. He just wrapped his arms around Eddy's neck and watched him, the way his mouth opened as orgasm hit—and he made such a stupid face, but it was the weirdest kind of turn-on, and the feeling of Eddy's jizz trailing across his hip made him so hard. When they kissed again, Brett moaned a little into his mouth.

“This is so weird,” Brett muttered with a wry chuckle when Eddy broke their kiss.

“Weird but good?” Eddy said hopefully.

“I mean...I just didn't think it'd ever be like this.”

“I kinda imagined it like this.”

“So you fantasized about us together, huh?” Brett said, the edge of a tease in his tone.

“Yeah, of course I did. Didn't you?”

Brett's gaze slid to the side evasively. “Yeah...”

“So.” Opening his eyes, Eddy grinned down at him. “What kinda stuff did you fantasize about, huh, when you were thinking of me?”

Brett's face froze in the blankest expression possible, but unfortunately, Eddy was too good at reading him.

“C'mon.” Eddy's grin got wider, and he wiggled against Brett teasingly, smearing sticky between them. It was both cute and sexy. “C'mon, cmon.”

“I mean, there were lots of different fantasies! How am I supposed to remember?!” Brett knew this stalling wasn't going to work for very long, but damn, this was supremely embarrassing.

“Breeeetty,” Eddy said in his most annoying tone ever, but being naked with swollen-red lips and a post-coital smirk on his face, Brett was ready to forgive him anything.

“Well,” Brett closed his eyes, bracing himself to bare his most humiliating secrets. “I used to beat off in the practice rooms at uni fantasizing about you catching me, making me confess what I was thinking about, then fucking me against the window on the practice room door while dirty-talking me about how anyone could walk by at any moment, and I'm such a filthy slut, that sort of thing...”

When Eddy didn't respond immediately, Brett opened his eyes, cringing slightly, to see Eddy staring down at him with an expression of awe.

“Dude. That's _really_ hot. _Fuck._ ” Eddy dove down to kiss his neck, nibbling along the skin to bite hard just over his collarbone. Brett squirmed a bit underneath him, and Eddy moved downward, hands and mouth trailing towards Brett's cock to capture it in his lips. His mouth sank over it tentatively, and Brett gasped, hips bucking up into the warmth, grabbing Eddy's head for something to hold onto. He came up again, closing his eyes to concentrate as he found a rhythm.

“A little more suction,” Brett advised gently, and Eddy did as told, quickly learning what to do with his tongue and the spot on the head where Brett liked to feel a little bit of drag.

Watching Eddy suck him off was a heady feeling. He wasn't terribly good at it, but he made up for everything the earnestness and a desire to please that had made Brett fall in love with him in the first place.

“Ah, fuck...I'm cumming,” Brett gasped, fingers threading through Eddy's hair as his hips arched up. Eddy drank it down like he was desperate for it, working Brett's cock until he was spent, then immediately went up for another kiss.

“Eugh! I don't wanna taste my own jizz!” Brett whined against Eddy's lips, but he couldn't bring himself to end it.

They stayed up practically all night—kissing and cuddling for a while, talking for hours, only to wind up having sex again, then going to shower, where Eddy slid soapy fingers into Brett's ass and they wound up fucking in the shower, too—“Did you ever fantasize about this?” Eddy murmured into his ear from behind as the hot shower poured down Brett's back and Eddy's cock was filling him—“I did,” Eddy admitted before Brett could even say anything, his voice a raw whisper that brought Brett to the brink of orgasm.

“I love you,” Eddy murmured to him, more than once, more that twice, over and over. The words were making Brett insane. Here, tangled up with Eddy's heat, he wasn't sure of anything anymore.

If there was a difference between friends and lovers, besides sex—

Had they ever been friends, really?

Had it all been a lie? A decade-long, painful but wonderful choked lie contrived by the both of them to avoid what they both feared most?

Brett didn't even want to consider acknowledging that.

Just, in the moment, when Eddy's hands were on him and his mind couldn't think of anything else, he said what felt right.

“I love you, Eddy.”

This was the limit.


End file.
